Eric Sloof - Entries from April 2014

Wednesday, April 30. 2014

Networking for VMware Administrators - Get a free sample chapter now

VMware Press is offering a free sample chapter of the Networking for VMware Administrators book written by Steve Pantol and Chris Wahl. Chapter 8, "vSphere Standard Switch" covers the features available with the vSphere Standard Switch.

A VMware ESXi server cannot do much of anything worthwhile without some means of getting network traffic to and from the VMs it hosts. Fortunately, VMware realized this and has thoughtfully provided two solutions to this problem, the vSphere Standard Switch and the vSphere Distributed Switch.

This chapter focuses on the former, the original recipe vSwitch that is included with every license level. Don't let the "standard" part of the Standard Switch fool you—it includes a bunch of great features to help you shuffle traffic around your network. With that said, let’s look at what makes a VMware Standard Switch tick.

Download Chapter 8

Available On Demand - Troubleshooting VMware vSphere [V5.5] Webinar

Listen and learn how to increase your skill and competency using the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI) to analyze problems. The webinar discusses best practices using products VMware ESXi 5.5, VMware vCenter Server 5.5, and vCloud Director. You'll gain knowledge on specific troubleshooting issue techniques for:

SSL certificates
Networking
Storage
VMware vCenter™ Single Sign-On
VMware vCenter Server
VMware ESXi host
VMware vSphere Cluster
VMware vSphere vMotion
Virtual Machine

Register for Troubleshooting VMware vSphere [V5.5]

Tuesday, April 29. 2014

Free e-learning course - VMware Virtual SAN Fundamentals [V5.5]

This training course focuses on deploying and managing a software-defined storage solution with VMware Virtual SAN 5.5. This course looks at how Virtual SAN is used as an important component in the VMware software-defined data center. The course is based on VMware ESXi 5.5 and VMware vCenter Server 5.5.

After this course, students should be able to:

Introduce concepts related to the architecture and features of VMware virtualized storage.
Articulate Virtual SAN benefits
Identify the primary issues associated with Virtual SAN configuration and management
Understand the primary use cases and customer situations when Virtual SAN is best used, including high level technical qualification criteria.
Identify VSAN elements
Enlist the prerequisites needed to configure Virtual SAN.

Register Now

Thursday, April 24. 2014

vCloud Hybrid Service Demo: Overview & Integration w/ vCloud Connector & vCloud Automation Center

Get an overview of the vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) UI and how to configure, monitor, edit and provision a Virtual Data Center. Includes how vCHS is integrated with other VMware tools including vCloud Connector and vCloud Automation Center.

Wednesday, April 23. 2014

New Way to Learn Puppet - Download the Learning VM

The Learning VM now includes fun quests to help you learn Puppet at your own pace. The new and improved Learning VM — along with its companion Quest Guide — is here to help you level up on Puppet.

Explore the technology in depth with a series of detailed, multi-step quests. Master topics such as accessing the Puppet Enterprise console, writing and using Puppet modules, and delving into Puppet resources, manifests, facts and more.

The Learning VM comes with Puppet Enterprise pre-installed to help you familiarize yourself with its features and capabilities. To evaluate Puppet Enterprise in your existing infrastructure, download it now — and use it for free on up to 10 nodes.

Download the Learning VM

Wednesday, April 16. 2014

Latest Fling from VMware Labs - Horizon View Event Notifier

The Horizon View Event Notifier connects to one or more existing Horizon View Event Database(s) and allows the user to customize which types of alerts to be notified on.

It can be run from any Windows based system and it collects and sends the alerts via email (SMTP) to users that are specified during the configuration process.

It allows aggregation of alerts across multiple Horizon View Pods and for near real-time alerting of Horizon View alerts that are otherwise very difficult to be notified on.

Download Horizon View Event Notifier

Monday, April 14. 2014

VMware Horizon View 5.3 Reviewer's Guide

The purpose of the VMware Horizon View 5.3 Reviewer's Guide is to support a self-guided, hands-on review of View 5.3. You'll

learn how easy it is to configure a View 5.3 environment, and use that environment to evaluate both new and core capabilities.

This document assumes you have basic knowledge of VMware vSphere ESXi and VMware vCenter and are comfortable configuring networking and storage in a virtual environment.

The step-by-step instructions will guide you through installation and how to work through the core and deployment scenarios.

This guide is not intended as a substitute for product documentation. You can find more detailed information regarding the installation, configuration, administration, and use of VMware Horizon View in the VMware Horizon View documentation.

Download: VMware Horizon View 5.3 Reviewer's Guide

VMware's response to the OpenSSL security issue

The following is a response to the current situation with the software security vulnerability dubbed Heartbleed:

The VMware Security and Engineering teams are working on remediation for the VMware products that have been impacted. VMware is acutely aware of the seriousness of the Heartbleed vulnerability, and all available resources are being directed toward a resolution amidst this industry-wide situation.

VMware plans to release updated products and patches for all affected products in this article by April 19th. Please check this article for any updates or exceptions to this timeframe.

See the lists for affected products, and refer to the Resolution/mitigation section for steps to protect your systems while updates are being prepared.

Resolution/mitigation

By deploying vSphere 5.5 (and other relevant VMware products) on an isolated management network, the exposure to CVE-2014-0160 is reduced. Hosting vSphere components directly on the Internet is strongly discouraged. Virtual machines that are exposed to the Internet should be updated in case they are affected. For the latter, refer to the instructions by the operating system provider.

VMware is working on updating its products to remediate the issue. When software updates for CVE-2014-0160 are available, deployment of these updates should be accompanied by replacing certificates and resetting passwords as per best practices. Instructions on how to do this for each affected product will be provided at the same time updates are released.

New VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2014-0004 (Heartbleed)

Thursday, April 10. 2014

VMware Horizon 6 Technical Overview

VMware Unleashes Horizon 6 -- Delivering Published Applications and Virtual Desktops on a Single Integrated Platform.

Published applications and virtual desktops delivered through a single platform offers application and desktop virtualization delivered from a single solution
A unified workspace for simplified access provides one place for IT administrators to provision and end-users to access applications and desktops through single sign-on.
Storage optimization using VMware Virtual SAN drives down capital costs to where virtual desktops are near parity with physical desktops and less expensive than physical laptops.
Closed-loop management and automation offers a holistic view of your entire virtual infrastructure – from data center to device – while also providing cloud-like automation to simplify management.
Central Image Management offers central image management of physical, virtual and employee-owned PCs from a single integrated solution that includes the latest updates from VMware Mirage.
Hybrid cloud delivery gives customers the ability to deploy Horizon 6 in a hybrid cloud that balances between private and public cloud infrastructures to best satisfy their needs – all through a single integrated Horizon client that seamlessly connects to virtual applications and desktops.

Also watch: vCO Plugin for VMware Horizon 6

Wednesday, April 9. 2014

New Technical White Paper - What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.5 Networking

With the release of VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware brings a number of enhancements to the networking capabilities in the vSphere platform. These enhancements enable users to manage their virtual networking infrastructure with greater efficiency and confidence. The following are the enhancements made in the vSphere 5.5 release:

More hashing algorithms for link aggregation
More link aggregation groups
Traffic-filtering support
Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) marking support
Improved host-level packet-capture tool
Improved single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support
40GB network adapter support

Download: What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.5 Networking

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